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Tuesday, July 31, 2007

"The recent agreement of the American government to supply sophisticated arms to the Saudis is a massive, massive – did I mention massive? – defeat for Israel, and return to form of the American Establishment." - permanent link

"He knew something was wrong with the official 9/11 story when his army handlers took his squad into a room just in time to watch the buildings collapse. With his demolitions experience, he immediately knew those towers could not have fallen like that without explosives." - National Writer's Syndicate

McGraw owned security companies, taxi firms, pubs, and a property portfolio in Scotland, Ireland and Spain worth 'at least £10m'. McGraw's empire is said to be worth £30 million in total. (In Scotland it has been estimated that 47% of individuals are earning under £10,000 per year.)

After one failed robbery, McGraw was arrested while trying to flee on foot. Charges were dropped and he was released the following morning. (According to the Mail on Sunday, 29 January 2006, only 3% of crimes in Scotland result in convictions.)

Reg McKay, in The Daily Record, 29 August 2005, reported that a street brawl between police left people scrutinising the cosy relationship between the Licensee (McGraw) and 'his police officer pals.'

"One of the Serious Crime Squad grabbed McGraw and tried to take him away from his Scottish Crime Squad captors. Tug of war was on. Then one man threw a punch and bedlam broke out with police wrestling, kicking and butting each other as McGraw stood in the middle of the battle totally ignored.

"Locals gathered for the best entertainment they'd had in years. Duelling rozzers. One or two joined in, taking the chance of a free swipe at a copper. Eventually peace was restored and the two police outfits went into confab. Whatever was said, the handcuffs were unlocked and Thomas McGraw walked back to his flat, a free man once again."

The Daily Record wrote: "Local uniforms and CID could often be found sitting in the McGraws' home drinking tea and smoking.

"When McGraw bought The Caravel pub, certain well-known detectives were in regularly, drinking heavily and never putting their hand in their pockets. It was too cosy."

A rival to McGraw was Arther Thompson. Former 'Glasgow godfather' Thompson reportedly was selling guns to the UVF (Ulster Volunteer Force). "He got caught, and decided to turn grass for MI5. They then told him he could pretty much start the drugs trade in Glasgow." - Donal MacIntyre - erutufonnofuture

Monday, July 30, 2007

In Gaza, for over 10 years, the Palestinian organisation Fatah ran an intelligence network.

That network had been set up with the help of the CIA.

Hamas is now in control in Gaza.

Hamas say they have now uncovered remarkable intelligence information from three locations linked to Fatah strongman Mohammed Dahlan. Reportedly, Dahlan has been an important CIA ally in Gaza since at least 1996. (Hamas Victory Brings Secrets)

Hamas alleges it has discovered videos used in a sexual-blackmail operation run by friends of the CIA inside Fatah's security services.

Hamas reports that it has discovered detailed evidence of Fatah-controlled spy operations carried out in Arab and Muslim countries (such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates) for the benefit of the U.S. and other foreign governments.

Hamas claims that Fatah intelligence agents worked with Israeli intelligence to target Islamist leaders for assassination.

"Does she (Dame Stella Rimington, former director-general of MI5) think the Russian secret service killed former Russian security agent Alexander Litvinenko? 'If the Russians did, their tradecraft has deteriorated remarkably from what I knew...'" - 'I thought it was all amusing'

State Terror: "In Green's analysis, the Iberian inquisitions were tools of the state, not of the church, but in the long run the state was weakened by their excesses. Their stifling effect on intellectual enquiry fuelled the decline of the Spanish and Portuguese empires...

"The Inquisitions were fuelled by corruption and malice, and many inquisitors were sexually predatory. The downfall of Archbishop Carranza of Toledo at the hands of Inquisitor-General Fernando Valdes was set in motion by Valdes's jealousy at Carranza's appointment..." - FT WEEKEND MAGAZINE - NON-FICTION: Lend me your fears

Sunday, July 29, 2007

"There is no way the global economy is about to collapse. It sounds trite, but the fundamentals really are strong. The world's leading economies are all displaying high levels of profitability and solid growth, with quite low inflation." - I share your pain, but we'll all gain in the end

Saturday, July 28, 2007

How might the Palestinians achieve the setting up of a viable state, without the use of violence?

Here are some points to ponder:

1. Israel's defence industry has done well as a result of 9/11 and other acts of allegedly 'fake' terror. ( Vigorous but vulnerable ). So the Palestinians and their friends should avoid getting involved as patsies in false flag activities. Palestinians, and their friends, should learn to ignore the agents provocateurs within their ranks.

2. Acts of violence by Palestinians must be avoided, as they tend to be counter productive. Israel wants to portray the Palestinians as mad Moslems, so that Israel will continue to get the sympathy of the American public. The Palestinians should realise that the leaders who advocate violence may be working, wittingly or unwittingly, for the Israelis.

3. Israel relies heavily on its young, educated, multilingual technicians. Friends of the Palestinians should try to lure these people away to safe, well paid jobs outside Israel. Friends of the Palestinians should try to ensure that there is a boycott of the products of the Israeli tech industry.

5. In Israel, the % of families below the poverty line has gone up from 17% in 1998 to 20% in 2007, while the proportion of poor children has risen from 23% to 35%. Some poor Jews might decide to leave Israel.

6. Israel relies on foreign workers to do much of the hard, low-paid work. The Palestinians and their friends need to try to politely persuade these workers to stay away from Israel.

7. Israel's Jewish population is around 5 million; the Israeli Arab population is just over 1 million. The total number of Palestinians (living in Israel, the West Bank, Gaza, Jordan, and elsewhere) is well over 9 million. The growth rate of the Israeli Arab population is 2.5%, while the growth rate of the Israeli Jewish population is 1.4%. The growth rate of the Israeli Arab population is slowing down (from 3.3% in 1999 to 2.5% in 2006). The Israeli Arab population needs to produce more children.

8. Israel receives billions of dollars from the USA each year. Since 1973, Israel has cost the United States about $1.6 trillion. That is more than $5,700 per American. (Economist tallies swelling cost of Israel to US csmonitor.com). The Palestinians and their friends should make more effort to persuade the USA to stop giving money to Israel. That means the Palestinians have to present a truly civilised image and not be provoked into stupid acts of violence.

9. Reportedly, the Israeli security services have made it their policy to create divisions among the Palestinians. Reportedly, many Palestinian organisations have been infiltrated. It would benefit the Palestinians if they became more united, by learning to ignore the extremists who may well be secretly working for Israel.

10. The Palestinians need to improve their levels of education, so that they are not so easily tricked and exploited.

"French President Nicolas Sarkozy signed a raft of partnership deals with Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi on Wednesday covering a range of issues including cooperation on atomic development... Libya has the world's 8th largest proven oil reserves and has ambitious plans to expand production by 2012 from 1.6 million barrels per day (bpd) to 3 million bpd. With Europe dominating trade with Libya, the EU is expected to foster a series of partnership agreements with Tripoli in coming months that would cement the role of member states in the Libyan oil and gas sector..." - Unseemly scramble for Libyan oil

Is the USA using fake terror as an excuse to have troops in Africa to control its oil? The USA helps to pay and arm the Trans-Saharan Counter-Terrorism Partnership (TSCTP) which is meant to fight 'Islamic terrorism' in Algeria, Morocco,Tunisia, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria and Senegal in the Sahel region and West Africa.

"The presence of American troops in the area is meant for patrolling the area and intervening in extreme cases, with 'surgical operations' being used to dismantle al-Qaida training bases. Hence Algeria's anti-terrorism campaign relies heavily on tightened relations with Washington, as it would hardly be in the condition of facing danger on its own account." - Algeria: a strengthening of Islamic terrorism and internal ...

Child Abuse : One child recalls being beaten whilst blindfolded. He was then forced into stress positions for ten hours in cold weather. He was then asked to sign papers and when he refused his interrogator smashed his head against a desk. One 15-year-old said that he was sexually abused and beaten repeatedly in sensitive areas of his body. - www.imemc.org/article/49612

Abuse : "In addition to being the moneylenders, they (Jews) controlled the liquor business and owned the drinking establishments, the gambling dens, and the brothels...

"During the 19th and early 20th centuries the Jewish trade in White slaves from these lands expanded enormously... The Jews recruited peasant girls in Polish and Russian villages, usually under false pretenses, and transported them to brothels in Turkey, Egypt, and other parts of the Middle East; to Vienna, Budapest, and other major cities in the Austro-Hungarian Empire; and as far away as New York, New Orleans, and Buenos Aires.

During the American Civil War Major General Ulysses S. Grant issued this order:

The Jews, as a class violating every regulation of trade established by the Treasury Department and also department orders, are hereby expelled …within twenty-four hours from the receipt of this order. - From Antisemitism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

Friday, July 27, 2007

"The initial result showed no votes for the SNP. An SNP candidate stopped the returning officer on the way to announce the result and managed to argue him into re-examining the data." http://scot-land.blogspot.com/

"I had learned from a recently released U.S. National Archives file that Shin Bet, the Israeli Security Agency, had infiltrated the PFLP (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine) and helped the Entebbe hijackers (Israeli commandos rescued the hostages in Uganda in 1976), so I wanted to learn more about the link between the PFLP and the PFLP-GC.

"I also wanted to learn more about allegations made by David Colvin, the first secretary of the British Embassy in Paris, concerning the rather bizarre collaboration between the PFLP and the Shin Bet."

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, General Command (PFLP-GC), based in Syria, has been accused of having some link to the Lockerbie bomb (1988).

It has been alleged that Marwan Khreesat of the PFLP-GC made the bomb which brought down PanAm 103 over Lockerbie.

On 26 October 1988 Khreesat was arrested and one of his bombs seized. Then Khreesat was mysteriously released. [1009] Former CIA agent Oswald Le Winter stated, "…pressure had come from Bonn… from the U.S. Embassy in Bonn… to release Khreesat." [1010]

"I consulted the article on the Entebbe Operation on Wikipedia, where I knew the story had been noted. To my surprise, I found that all references to the alleged collaboration between the PFLP and the Shin Bet had been suppressed. Moreover, it is no longer possible to edit the page.

Braekeleer wonders to what extent Wikipedia and the media in general are controlled by the CIA and its friends.

Braekeler reminds us of the CIA's influence over the media back in 1953 when the CIA and its friends overthrew Iran's Prime Minister Mossadegh. Braeckeler quotes from a copy of the CIA's secret history of the coup :

Agents from the CIA and SIS (the American and British intelligence services) 'directed a campaign of bombings by Iranians posing as members of the Communist Party, and planted articles and editorial cartoons in newspapers.' 'The CIA was apparently able to use contacts at the Associated Press to put on the newswire a statement from Tehran about royal decrees that the CIA itself had written...'The Iran desk of the State Department was able to place a CIA study in Newsweek, using the normal channel of desk officer to journalist. The article was one of several planted press reports that, when reprinted in Tehran, fed the war of nerves against Iran's prime minister, Mohammed Mossadegh'

Braekeler wonders about the extent of control over Wikipedia by the security services.

Braekeler speculates about 'Slim Virgin' an administrator at Wikipedia.

Reportedly, Slim Virgin has been revealed as Linda Mack, who worked with Pierre Salinger (senator and investigative journalist) in his Lockerbie investigation.

Reportedly, Linda Mack seemed to try to point the investigation in the direction of Qaddafi and Libya.

Thursday, July 26, 2007

"While Alan Johnston was being held, I was asked by the BBC World Service if I would say a few words of support for him. I readily agreed, and suggested I also mention the thousands of Palestinians abducted and held hostage. The answer was a polite no; and all the other hostages remained in the memory hole...

"It is 80 years since Edward Bernays, the father of public relations, predicted a pervasive 'invisible government' of corporate spin, suppression and silence as the true ruling power...

"When the BBC radio reporter Andrew Gilligan reported the truth, he was pilloried and sacked along with the BBC's director general, while Blair, the proven liar, was protected by the liberal wing of the media and given a standing ovation in parliament...

PUBLIC RELATIONS

"PR Week estimated that the amount of 'PR-generated material' in the media is "50 per cent in a broadsheet newspaper in every section apart from sport...

"Huge corporations such as Hill & Knowlton... 'sold' the slaughter known as the first Gulf war, and the Sawyer Miller Group... sold hated, pro-Washington regimes in Colombia and Bolivia and ...(its) operatives included Mark Malloch Brown...

"Hundreds of millions of dollars go to corporations spinning the carnage in Iraq as a sectarian war and covering up the truth: that an atrocious invasion is pinned down by a successful resistance while the oil is looted."

Wednesday, July 25, 2007

In his Guardian article, 26 July 2007, Labour peer Anthony Giddens writes "At the outer edge of possibility, terrorist groups could acquire nuclear capability. We must mobilise against such risks, and have to strike a new balance between liberty and security to do so."

Giddens does not mention Operation Gladio, Operation Northwoods or the Jubilee Plot. The Jubilee Plot, you will recall, was a British government false flag operation, using patsies, to discredit certain opponents. There are people in Britain who believe that the Lockerbie Bomb incident was the work of elements of the security services of the USA, who were trying to cover up a drug smuggling operation. If most of the terror events are the work of the security services, then we may need some fresh thinking on security matters. - Liberty in the balance

Anthony Giddens is the author of Over to You, Mr Brown: How Labour Can Win Again. Giddens's "third way" political approach was Bill Clinton's and Tony Blair's guiding political idea. - giddensa@parliament.uk

Mary - P. may get a peerage, and that football chap's to get a knighthood. Joseph Goebbels is also down for a gong. Theres' an old lady in Braunau am Inn due for an OBE. And some old bloke in Sedgefield deserves an MBE.

"Did Saddam Hussein really use industrial shredders to kill his enemies? ...Ann Clwyd, Labour MP for Cynon Valley and chair of Indict... wrote of the shredder in the Times on 18 March... One ... person who talked about a shredder was Kenneth Joseph, an American... Private Eye suggested that Joseph’s story was ‘a propaganda fabrication by right-wingers associated with the Revd Moon’s Unification Church’." - The Spectator.co.uk

"The reported offer came before an emergency Arab League meeting in Egypt in discussions between UAE officials and a Hussein aide...

"The Hussein aide, Abed Hmoud, is now in jail in Iraq.

"The UAE official's account was repeated by another source who attended the Arab League summit and, separately, by a senior UAE government official...

"News of the reported offer from the UAE emerged... during an interview broadcast by the Arab network Al-Arabiya with Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayed Al Nahayan, the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, one of the United Arab Emirates.

"The offer was spearheaded by his father, then-UAE President Sheikh Zayed Ben Sultan Al Nahayan, who died November 3.

'"During those days, the circumstances we worked under needed a very swift decision, an immediate response,' the crown prince said in a documentary broadcast by the network.

'"We had secured the approval of the main players, everyone who was involved, and the man concerned -- Saddam Hussein -- in 24 hours,' he said. 'So we came to the summit to lay down all the facts at the conference table. There would have been results if the issues were brought up but, again, this is all part of the past right now.'

"...CNN reported in March 2003 that an exile plan for Hussein appeared to be gaining support among his Persian Gulf neighbors and that during the Arab League meeting the UAE president had submitted a proposal calling for Hussein to surrender power within 14 days and leave Iraq under the temporary control of the Arab League."

"Doctors who examined Baha Mousa, a 24-year-old Basra hotel worker who was kicked and beaten to death in British custody in 2003, have been reported to the General Medical Council. The move follows allegations that army doctors who treated the detainees colluded in a cover-up by misdiagnosing and failing to properly document the extent of prisoners' injuries." - UK Army doctors in Baha Mousa case 'colluded in cover-up'

Monday, July 23, 2007

"My name is Courtney Coventry. I met with Lord Levy over possible donations to the party...

"Lord Levy grabbed my husbands arm and pulled us over to one side saying to Mr. Blair that he had to discuss something with us. Lord Levy then asked my husband to confirm an amount he would donate and how grateful 'Tony' would be. My husband said that we were not ready to give a commitment to a figure but we would consider it over the course of the next few days. Lord Levy then proceeded to push further and said that given the right amount he mentioned 500,000 pounds and 300,000 pounds he would make sure 'Tony' would have John put on the honors list. We were more than a little taken aback but before we could fully register what had been said Lord Levy called Mr. Blair over and said that we were going to make a substantial donation to the party and then added that he was sure we could arrange an honour for services to the party. Mr. Blair looking a little embarrassed nodded and smiled...

"We arrived at the House of Lords and met Lord Levy who took us on a guided tour...

"Lord Levy discussed again, how grateful the party would be for our support and said he had discussed honours and that my husband would be placed on the honours list as a result of a substantial donation or loan as he called it when he tried to press us for a higher amount than the hundred thousand we had said we were considering. Levy said why didn’t we loan the labour party 300,000 then at a later date we could convert this to a donation and that he was certain we could afford this. As I knew nothing about the way in which your honours system works I asked... Lord Levy how he would arrange to have John put on the honours list. He said the government makes the recommendations and 'He would make sure Tony dealt with it.'...

"I contacted the police a several months ago to make them aware of discussions that took place with Lord Levy during which Lord Levy attempted to entice a donation then loan by way of saying should we do this an honour would be arranged." - http://www.courtneycoventry.com/index.html

"Polonium signs were found not only in places Lugovoi and Kovtun visited in London, but in different places where the two Russian businessmen had not been... The British version presumes that Polonium -210 was administered to Litvinenko in tea Lugovoi offered to Litvinenko on November 1, but both Lugovoi and Kovtun ordered the same tea for themselves." - Russia views British version of Litvinenko's case as "vulnerable"

"Kafeel Ahmed, who suffered 90 per cent burns after driving a blazing Jeep Cherokee into Glasgow airport on 30 June,also linked to the two unexploded car bombs in central London the previous day, was in frequent contact with Malta in the months leading up to the series of foiled terrorist attacks according to Indian police." - Illegal immigrants from Malta checked for terrorism links

"A documentary broadcast August 25 (1998) by German public television presents compelling evidence that some of the main suspects in the 1986 Berlin disco bombing, the event that provided the pretext for a US air assault on Libya, worked for American and Israeli intelligence. Musbah Eter was running an international business in Malta, which, according to Frontal, served as a cover for extensive intelligence operations on behalf of the CIA." - German TV exposes CIA, Mossad links to 1986 Berlin disco bombing

"U.S. corporations like Coca-Cola, Chiquita, Drummond and Occidental Oil hire paramilitaries to target trade unionistsin order to kill union organizing and negotiating efforts. This corporate-death squad link has come under increasing scrutiny recently. Since 2002, the Colombian Action Network has been leading a boycott of Coca-Cola products for Coca-Cola’s collusion with death squads and the murders of eight trade unionists. Campuses across the country have been ending their contracts with ‘Killer Coke.’ This spring, Chiquita pled guilty to arming and funding paramilitaries in Colombia." - Fight Back! - June 2007 - Drummond Corporation and Colombia's ...

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"It is submitted that the Lockerbie case demonstrates just how necessary it is, if public confidence is to be maintained, for the Scottish Executive to institute a high-powered independent investigation into all three aspects - investigation, prosecution and adjudication - of the Scottish criminal justice system, as has already been called for by, among others, Dr Jim Swire, Tam Dalyell and Professor Hans Koechler, the UN observer at the Lockerbie trial." - Robert Black, QC, FRSE, Professor Emeritus of Scots Law at the University of Edinburgh. - The fairy story of the Crown's independence

A planned coup in the USA in 1933 by right-wing American businessmen: "The coup was aimed at toppling President Franklin D Roosevelt with the help of half-a-million war veterans. The plotters, who were alleged to involve some of the most famous families in America, (owners of Heinz, Birds Eye, Goodtea, Maxwell Hse & George Bush’s Grandfather, Prescott) believed that their country should adopt the policies of Hitler and Mussolini..." - The Whitehouse coup

"(There was an) alliance of German chemical giant, I.G. Farben, the second largest holder of stock in Standard Oil Company of New Jersey, with U.S. intelligence... By the mid-1920s, the Dulles brothers ...structured an interlocking directorate of American and German banks... Right up to 1942, the consortium of Standard Oil and Texaco was still shipping Saudi oil to Germany... Prescott Bush (was) a director of the Union Banking Corporation in New York, which from 1924 through 1942 acted as the American private bank for the Nazi steel trust headed by Fritz Thyssen, Hitler's earliest and largest financier... Riding on the coattails of Brown Brothers Harriman, the Rockefeller brothers, and the Dulles brothers, whose interests they had served on various boards, neither Prescott Bush nor George Herbert Walker were ever held personally or politically accountable for their roles in financing and directing Nazi-controlled enterprises."MG Levey: The History of Dirty-Tricks (Part III)

Sunday, July 22, 2007

UK and Private Finance Initiatives (private companies providing public services): "A large section of this country's biggest single piece of infrastructure is being run by the administrator Ernst and Young. Rest assured, dear taxpayers, the accounting firm's meter will be running for months to come. As well as that bill, the public is now in line to meet Metronet's £2 billion cost over-run. And its £2.6 billion debt...

"Since 1997, excluding the Tube PPP, the Treasury has signed 700 other PFI contracts for public infrastructure and services worth around £65 billion. The long-term cost to taxpayers? A cool £166 billion... Mr Brown has become addicted to PFI, which has allowed him to rack up multi-billion pound liabilities, mostly hidden from the national accounts. This is Enron-style financial management in the taxpayers' name." - Does 'Enron' ring any bells, Mr Brown?

Saturday, July 21, 2007

"Erdogan... recently asked Washington to explain how US arms get into the hands of the insurgents. It is unclear, he said pointedly, whether the arms fall into the PKK's hands via Iraqis or if the US supplies the PKK directly." - TURKEY'S FAULT LINES

"Our ill-trained youth will kick Britain out of the elite..." - Liam Halligan

"The Sunday Times has... discovered that there was a... key piece of evidence – a diary kept by Evans that allegedly details a series of meetings at the House of Lords in 2004 with Lord Levy, Blair’s chief fundraiser, to discuss a peerage. One well-placed Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) source said the diary was 'dynamite' and provided 'spectacular' evidence of an alleged 'agreement' for Evans to be ennobled in return for a £1m loan." - No 10 honours plot: four new names

Barack Obama’s foreign policy agenda is virtually identical to that of the Bush administration, including his approach to the “war on terrorism”. Obama has promised a robust US military-intelligence presence in Iraq and the Middle East to “root out Al-Qaeda”.... Mitt Romney promises to “combat radical Islam” with a war agenda identical to Obama’s (which is identical to Bush-Cheney’s). Romney’s provocative speech at the Herzliya Conference speaks for itself. -Washington's Consensus Al Qaeda Deception by Larry Chin

Friday, July 20, 2007

"One year into the Zeist trial, the prosecutors were told for the first time that the evidence had been fabricated by a former Libyan agent who had become a CIA asset in 1988. Internal CIA cables show that the agency was well aware since 1988 that the man was a fabricator. The Zeist trial constitutes the only case in history where internal CIA documents were used in a foreign court. As a rule, the Scottish Prosecution Authorities have a duty to investigate the credibility of their witnesses before they issue an arrest warrant. In the Megrahi's case, they did not. As they blindly trusted their U.S. partners, they failed to perform one of their most basic obligations.Instead of admitting the fact, they tried to cover it up, thus violating Scottish Criminal Law, which requires the prosecution to provide the defense with any significant information susceptible to help their cause." - Lockerbie: Evidence Fabricated by CIA

"The SNP MP ... suggested the police and Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) may have succumbed to political pressure. 'It simply beggars belief that the police and the CPS both believe no charges should be brought,' he said. 'If this is the case, the next few weeks will be extremely interesting, with assistant commissioner Mr Yates having promised the public administration committee that all the evidence assembled will be made public if required.' - SNP: Lack of charges 'beggars belief'

"Most interesting now will be how the other Blairite boot-lickers and sycophants will respond. Back in February, both the Scum and Martin Kettle ran similar articles demanding that Yates either put up or shut up." - Sticking the boot in.

"Damascus has also warmed to Turkey, Israel's ally in the region, and this is somewhat unsettling news for Tehran, which looks to Syria as a counterbalance to the Israel-Turkey nexus. France, under the new pro-American President Nicolas Sarkozy, has wasted little time before trying its hands at an active Syria policy. From the vantage point of Tehran, the net result of all the external influences on Syria may indeed be a considerable mellowing or an incremental 'soft decoupling' of its relations with Syria."Iran-Syria alliance on uncertain ground

"Israel on Friday denounced an alliance between Iran and Syria that it said cast doubts on Syrian peace intentions, following a visit by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Damascus. 'The fact that the Damascus regime chose Ahmadinejad as a partner in a strategic alliance raises serious doubt on recent statements from Syria on its intentions for peace,' foreign ministry spokesman Mark Regev told AFP." - Israel slams Iran-Syria alliance

Thursday, July 19, 2007

"On July 7th the Los Angeles Times reported that back in 1991 Mr Thompson accepted a lobbying job that required him to help persuade the first Bush White House to allow family-planning clinics that receive federal funds to offer advice on abortions. Team Thompson denies the story. However, the lobbying group's minutes support it, potentially branding the candidate a liar as well as unsound on abortion. Not a great start for a man who is not yet formally in the race." - Presidential candidates Hitting the buffers Economist.com